GAGAN BANGA Vs. SAMIT MANDAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Interlocutory applications for impleadment and to bring on record additional facts are allowed.

(2.) The petitioners' case is that there is trend of initiating mala fide criminal proceedings against financial institutions/lenders and their officers, representatives and managers, to somehow restrain them from pursuing recovery proceedings of their enforceable debts, and/or to compel them to make settlement of their dues. FIRs are registered to circumvent legally owed debts by scuttling the statutory regime of SARFAESI, and also by projecting a purely civil financial dispute as a criminal matter with a view to intimidate and in abuse of the criminal process.

(3.) In "Priyanka Srivastava Vs. State of U.P.", (2015) 6 SCC 287, this Court had noticed that taking recourse to criminal law by bypassing statutory remedies to bring the financial institutions on their knees, has the inherent potentiality to affect the marrows of economic health of the nation. Further, in "Vijay Kumar Ghai and Anr. Vs. State of W.B. and Ors." (2022) 7 SCC 124, this Court quashed the criminal proceedings being abuse of law in a purely civil financial dispute and being a case of forum shopping. Despite these judgments, continuation of such trend appears extremely disturbing.